


From This Slumber She Shall Wake

by outruntheavalanche



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, On Hiatus, POV Alternating, Slow Build, Survivor Guilt, Unreliable Narrator, screw the canon honestly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-12 23:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7127297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’s falling apart at the seams.  It’s what he deserves.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What He Deserves

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still bitter about the S3 finale, but I am considerably less bitter than I was immediately following that morass. In fact, I'm not-bitter enough to start posting my take on an alternate S4 where Abbie isn't carelessly, cruelly discarded. :D (Maybe I lied about being less bitter.)
> 
> Rating (and summary and title) may change in the future, and additional characters (like Frank! Macey! Mama Mills! Ezra! maybe even the criminally underused Sheriff Reyes!) might pop up. POV will most likely end up rotating between Ichabod, Abbie, and Jenny.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Ichabod hasn't been able to sleep in months._

Ichabod hasn't been able to sleep in months. Or, at least, that’s how it feels. Every time he closes his eyes, rests his head on his pillow, and settles in for the night, he sees her.

 _Her_. He cannot bring himself to even think her name. It still hurts too much. The wound is still raw, ragged at the edges. He feels the loss of her so acutely, he’s surprised he didn’t expire on the spot himself.

Ichabod joined a support group a few weeks after—after the Incident. One of the ladies who regularly attended the weekly group meetings told him it would get easier with time. The pain wouldn’t completely go away, but it would eventually dull. 

She was wrong.

Ichabod tosses and turns in bed, unable to find a comfortable enough position to be able to snatch even a few hours’ restless sleep. 

He knows it’s because tonight marks a half-year since… Since he lost her. Since he lost the one person who made the world spin. She made everything around him make _sense_. Just her presence was enough to sooth him, or reassure him that this was all worth it. That—together, side by side—they would be victorious.

Ichabod sighs and stares up at the blank ceiling, focuses on a spidery crack in the white plaster. 

The house creaks and groans around him, and he almost wishes it were ghosts. At least, then, this place wouldn’t feel so empty. It would give him something to do, anyway. Something to take his mind off the empty space where _she_ should have been.

The worst of it is that it’s his fault. She sacrificed herself, yet again, for the world. And when had the world ever proven worthy of her sacrifices, or her gifts? 

Ichabod should have offered to go in her place. He should have fought her, fought _for_ her. Instead, he meekly went along, thinking—naïvely, stupidly—it could be reversed. Ichabod knew—he _knew_ , in his heart of hearts—that he could get her back because she came back the last time. He was charming enough he could persuade Hades and Persephone into letting her go. 

And, blinded by his own foolishness and arrogance, he lost the one woman he—he lost—

Well, Ichabod lost everything.

Ichabod sighs wearily and laces his hands over his aching chest. “It is the least you deserve, you bloody clodpate.”

The cracks in the ceiling appear to expand and contract before his eyes, but he knows it’s just the lack of sleep finally getting to him. He grinds his fists into his eyes and ignores the wetness on his cheeks. There’s no use in crying. Especially not when his misery is his own doing.

He hazards a glance over at the alarm clock beside his bed. **4:32 AM** blinks back at him, almost accusingly.

Ichabod sweeps a hand through his hair and down over his eyes. He’ll be getting no sleep this night, like most of the nights preceding.

He’s falling apart at the seams. It’s what he deserves.


	2. There Was No Answer In the Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Abbie blinks her eyes open to blinding white light, and she can’t help but laugh at the cliché._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two parts are mostly introductory, and I'll be getting to more ~interesting~ stuff soon. I hope.
> 
> Chapter title from "What Happens When The Heart Just Stops," by The Frames. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Abbie blinks her eyes open to blinding white light, and she can’t help but laugh at the cliché. Then again, they wouldn’t call them clichés if there wasn’t some kernel of truth in there.

Sighing, she sits up slowly and rolls the kinks and aches out of her neck. A ragged blanket falls from her shoulders as she stretches her arms over her head and tries to work all the stiffness out of her joints. When she swings her legs out from under the torn, shabby blanket and plants her bare feet on the ground, she’s surprised to find it’s carpeted. 

Abbie digs her toes into the soft pile and just _thinks_. She pushes the blanket aside and gets to her feet, her weary body protesting in little starbursts of pain at her neck, hips, and lower back. 

“How long have I been asleep?” she wonders aloud.

She doesn’t get an answer, not that she’d been expecting one.

Abbie pats at her waist and realizes, with some annoyance, that her gun and its holster are gone. Where did she put that thing? It’s more trouble than it’s worth, sometimes.

Then she remembers—

Remembers fragments of the final confrontation with Pandora and the Hidden One. Bits and pieces assault her, piercing her memory and lodging there like shrapnel. A flash of Ichabod’s grief shafts her in the heart and, for a moment, she’s irritated. He sniveled and wept, clung to her hand and bid her not to leave him. And he still couldn’t even bring himself to say those three words to her in their final moments together. The words she’d spent years waiting to hear.

Ichabod hadn’t come after her, hadn’t fought for her. He’d just let her go. He let her—

She’s dead. Abbie is _dead_. 

It all comes crashing down and Abbie sinks slowly to the carpet as the weight grows too much for her to bear. Grief claws its way out of her chest, up her throat, emerging in dry, brittle, barely audible sobs. 

Abbie must’ve been here—wherever _here_ is—for a while. She has no tears left. 

She knots her hands in the soft carpet and pulls tufts of it out. It’s faded, a dull shade of dusty gray, but it had probably once been snow-white in a previous life. 

When she lifts her head and sniffs the air, she can detect the faint aroma of must and mildew. The smell of death. Of rot.

Abbie cringes and shudders. Picking the blanket up off the floor, Abbie pulls it around her shoulders.

“Where _am_ I?” she murmurs, knowing there will be no answer.

Abbie realizes she's all alone. She scoffs. Now there's some irony for you.


End file.
